Tag Archives: squash bugs

It is a familiar theme on my blog the last few years – I show up and post some updates and then disappear again. I really do not have any good excuses, except that life is busy and blogging falls to the bottom of my “to do” list. I always imagined that life would slow down and get less busy as my parenting duties decreased, but that certainly has not been the case. Our motivation for buying and moving to this little hobby farm 15 years ago was to create an interesting life for our small children and to give them a taste of the country life we experienced growing up. Well, those children are not small any more and in fact, two of them have been out of the house for a few years already. We only have one remaining at home and in only a year, we will be empty nesters. Maybe then I will have more time?

In defense of my latest absence in the blogosphere, my spring and summer has been an especially crazy, chaotic and wonderful one. Our oldest son graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in May and we spent a week out in New York for all the graduation week activities. Family and friends joined us to celebrate our son’s accomplishment and we could not have been more proud to see him achieve his goal!

Immediately after the graduation ceremony, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. Another proud moment for our family.

After returning home from our amazing week out east, we immediately refocused our attention on preparing for that same son’s wedding at the end of June.

See? I was not exaggerating when I said it has been a busy spring and summer for our family. Like graduation, the wedding was wonderful and the day was filled with friends, family and so much love.

Despite all the preparations and celebrations in our life, we did manage to get our vegetable garden planted this spring and it is coming along quite nicely. We have already enjoyed an abundance of asparagus, lettuce, arugula, and spinach this spring. Soon we will be harvesting more delicious and fresh produce to eat.

Here is a view of our onions, string beans, carrots and beets. My sunflowers are shooting up along the fence. The climbing plants, cucumbers and squash, are starting to make their way up the supports that Jesse built for them a few years back. I go out there every few days to try to direct the newest growth up the wire. According to the old saying, if all is going well, corn plants should be “knee-high by the Fourth of July.” Our corn plants are clearly doing well, because they were armpit high by the Fourth of July this year! Now if we can protect the crop from the raccoons we might just get to enjoy some sweet corn in a month or so.We planted tomato plants before leaving in the middle of May to drive out to West Point for graduation week. We knew it was risky because the rule of thumb around our area of Minnesota is to hold off planting until after Memorial Day. Not surprisingly, we did have a hard frost while we were gone and almost all of our newly planted tomatoes froze out. Upon returning home, after Memorial Day, we replanted. The new tomato plants are happy and thriving in the heat and we should start getting some cherry tomatoes soon.

After a disastrous infestation of potato bugs a few years back, we opted out of planting potatoes for two years afterwards. We planted one row last year to see what would happen and all went well. This year we increased to two rows and so far, we are all in the clear. No sign of potato bugs and the plants are going crazy. A similar experience with squash bugs made us take last year off from all members of the squash family. We did not plant any squash, zucchini or pumpkins. Taking a year or two off from planting crops that experienced bug infestations has worked well for us in the past, and like the potatoes, the pumpkins are doing well so far and showing no signs of those disgusting insects. We will keep our fingers crossed that they do not make an appearance later in summer.Besides our vegetable garden, I have been busy in my flower gardens and there have been some other new projects around here that I hope to share some time soon in another post.

In the meantime, I hope your summer is going well and that wherever you are, that you are enjoying the warm summer days and nights!

Fall has definitely arrived here in Minnesota and as usual, I am way behind in drafting posts about what has gone on around here. I have taken hundreds of photos over the summer, but putting those photos into a post takes time…something I always seem to be lacking.

I took this photo of our front porch today. We harvested our pumpkins a few weeks ago and have kept them in the barn until yesterday. With a cool and rainy day upon us, we decided it was time to bring them out and display them on our front steps. The bright orange sure livens up the entrance to our house!

We have decided to take a year off from growing pumpkins and squash after a nasty infestation of squash bugs for the second year in a row. (You can read more about squash bugs here).

If you have not dealt with these buggers in your garden, be happy. They are disgusting and we just do not want to deal with them next year again. We are hoping the absence of their favorite feeding ground for a year will break the cycle and we can resume growing pumpkins and squash without battling those bugs all summer long. We took a year off from growing potatoes after repeated infestations with potato bugs and it seemed to work. Being cautious, we planted a small row of potatoes this year and enjoyed a potato bug-free season!

On the bright side, we did manage to battle through the squash bugs and grow some pumpkins before they totally destroyed the vines. Our squash crop however, was a total loss.

My ferns on the porch are continuing to thrive in this cooler weather. I hate the thought of them being killed off by the frost. I may try to bring them inside and see how long I can stretch out their life into the fall and winter.

I hope you are enjoying the fresh air and bright colors of fall in your part of the country.

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Welcome!

My husband and I are just two farm kids that decided to purchase a run down, "lots of potential" hobby farm over a decade ago. We have been trying to blend our chaotic life with a slice of country life from our past ever since. Follow our successes and failures here in gardening, beekeeping, cooking and smoking foods, endless renovation projects, raising chickens, and raising kids.

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